Presiding Bishop of God First Ministries Inc and renowned televangelist, Bishop Isaac Idahosa has revealed plans to collaborate with certain stakeholders within Nigerian movie industry space to produce a feature-length biopic themed on the novel disease, COVID-19. Bishop Idahosa told eelive.ng that making the historical drama is both expedient and obligatory.
According to him, he described the need for the movie as expedient because, everyone that witnessed and survived the pandemic deserves to pin down their experiences to tell their stories.
Likewise, he also considers it obligatory to tell the COVID-19 story because he thinks the movie would be archive material for the next generation in history classes.
Here’s what he said:
“If you don’t learn from examples, you would become an example yourself. It is very important we tell the story of the COVID-19 pandemic. We need to tell the story of how we handled the outbreak, what our government did right; and what they could have done better in handling the crises.
“The generation coming after us deserves to know, we owe them that.
“Besides, the movie would be good for the archives. It would serve as a reference point in history,” the cleric remarked.
Speaking further, Bishop Idahosa revealed that research, consultation, and pre-production arrangement for the COVID-19 movie are on already; while the movie still in the works promises both local and international collaborations.
“Plans are on already, we have started to gather all the necessary information and writing has commenced. The movie will attract a lot of collaboration from a lot of international agencies. It is still a developing project, I will not want to give out all the information yet,” he said.
However, the Bishop revealed that the project with a budget nearing a billion naira would be coordinated by veteran filmmaker, Chico Ejiro.
“All I can say for now is that Chico Ejiro is in charge of the project, he is a very trustworthy professional and knows his onions in the filmmaking business. We are already table casting and considering certain people for roles. COVID-19 is a global pandemic so we are approaching the movie that way too,” he explained.